When did you last come across a rude individual? Was it at the office? While getting the mail? In the elevator on the way to your dentist appointment? It happens to the best of us. There's a preponderance of rude folks in the world, and there's little we can do about it. We do, however, exert control over how we respond to the ones in our orbit.  To be fair, we ourselves can be rude to others as times. We're only human. The key is for the person to recognize the offensive behavior, apologize, and prevent displaying such behavior in the future to the best of their ability.  Some people are, well, naturally rude. It's as if a day that goes by where they don't exhibit rudeness raises alarm. It could just be in their genes, it may be a product of their environment/upbringing, or a melding of the two. I speak of the folks who cut others off on the road, don't hold the door for those behind them, and lambast their co-workers.  In some cases, they may just be having a ...

Has COVID brought the dating market to its knees?  Not quite, although, as one would suspect, people are trying to balance staying healthy and safe with keeping their love lives from going full-on rusty. But there's no question that, with many businesses ground to a halt and crowd-attracting events nixed indefinitely, it limits opportunities to meet and connect with people.  Social distancing and reduced capacity limits in restaurants, movie theaters, and other venues where you might ordinarily strike up a conversation with someone doesn't exactly lend itself to romance.  Thankfully, with the rollout of vaccines, we may finally be turning the corner, as deaths and cases have been dropping sharply in recent weeks.  Just because we are still in the middle of a pandemic doesn't mean you can't go on dates, but you should insist that whoever you meet get tested, as he or she may ask you as well. It isn't as if meeting in a quiet restaurant, mall, or park is all bad. Thin...

Some of the people we have to deal with in our daily lives are, shall we say, difficult. Our bosses may impose unrealistic demands on us, oblivious to the fact we may have a sick child or parent to attend to. Our relatives might meddle in our business, bringing pressure to bear on us so that we take the course of action they think would make us happy rather than the one we're confident will. (As if they would know us better than we know ourselves.) And even our closest friends can be tough to stomach on their worst days. They may take their frustrations out on us without necessarily intending to, potentially causing a rift in the friendship. Here are a few tips to prevent you from losing your cool: 1. Remind yourself it's only temporary. You may intend to stay in that job another year before moving on. The family member giving you grief -- your cousin Eddie, for example -- may only be in town for another few days. And your friend, normally of a jovial temperament, m...

Sometimes it isn't that someone has changed, but that now you see them for who they really are. It can be disappointing to realize that someone whom you held in high esteem -- whether an old friend or relatively new girlfriend -- isn't as you imagined. Maybe you've noticed a pattern of lies, throwing cold water on the rosy impression you'd built of them in your mind. Perhaps they'd hidden the fact that they have a massive heap of debt, a never-before-mentioned ex who continues reaching out to them, or aspirations of moving to Europe in a year. Do some people change for the worst over time? In some instances, yes. It's possible they could grow complacent, envious, or flat-out bitter in the relationship, and things like alcohol and stress at work may be culprits -- though they're certainly not valid reasons for bad behavior. But in other cases, they manage to put up a front -- rather effectively, I might add -- that may persist for years. The p...

Are you constantly worrying over where your partner is at 10 p.m. at night? Does he or she continue to grapple with drug or alcohol problems despite the fact they've pledged time and time again to quit and seek treatment? Have they done something to suggest they're not capable of being trusted, like cheating on or stealing from you? Do they constantly pick fights for no apparent reason? If this sounds like your relationship -- one with the flair for the dramatic -- then something isn't right. A romantic relationship shouldn't keep you on edge all of the time. You should not have to fear your partner's next move given their penchant for chaos and unpredictability. Now, no one's perfect, of course. We all make mistakes. We all let the other person down from time to time. But it certainly should not be an everyday occurrence. In fact, a partner is the one we often go to for comfort; they, of all people, bring a sense of stability to our lives (at...

At the end of the day, what people think of you is none of your business. Why? Because your happiness doesn't depend on other people. It resides within you! So why should the joy and satisfaction you get from life be contingent upon their opinion of you, which may be faulty to begin with? No matter how hard you may try to please others, you will always fall short in someone's eyes. How others see us is not necessarily who we are. They merely base their opinions on how they perceive us. And, remember, human beings are conditioned to accept perception as reality when they don't have all the facts. It's akin to judging a book by its cover. Never allow the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner voice.  The deeper we get sucked into others' opinions -- and the harder we seek their validation in order to feel whole -- the easier it is to lose ourselves. Obviously, we all want to do our part to cultivate a favorable image of ourselves. No one ...

Instead of striving to be superior to other people, we should aim to be superior to our previous selves. It can be easy to assume, judging from the content people post on social media, that they lead perfect lives. As we sift through photos of Facebook friends sunbathing in the Caribbean, sharing cheesecake at a 5-star restaurant with a partner, or driving away in a souped up Mercedes Benz, we may find ourselves green with envy. But comparing ourselves to others -- whether our coworkers, our neighbors, or are friends -- is an exercise in futility. Really, people are not some monolithic group. We have different tastes and interests, goals and fears, struggles and challenges. While it's good to look up to others and admire what they've accomplished, there's no sense in wishing for the lives they have. After all, they may be doing a good job at masking the fact that their lives leave a lot to be desired. They may very well be having health, money, or marital problems...

By now, you may have picked up on a common refrain across many of my posts: That happiness lies in the present, which is why we should aim to live in the here and now. Sadly, however, many people live only for a better tomorrow. Then, when tomorrow comes, their focus is still on the future.  There's nothing wrong with being forward-looking and continually aiming to achieve goals. But unless one takes time every now and then to appreciate the present -- to come up for air and smell the roses, so to speak -- they will always find themselves in a state of yearning rather than contentment. For example, some people have an insatiable appetite for acquiring material goods, whether they be clothes, shoes, gadgets, and cars. No sooner do they get their hands on one than they already set their sights on their next conquest. They may leave the item collecting dust, rendering it obsolete in a few years. In essence, they're all about the chase. Once what they want is in their...

No matter how well we think we know someone, some people never cease to surprise us. That easygoing guy at work whom you thought could never hurt a fly may turn out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing. That seemingly wonderful girl whom you could confidently say you could trust more than some people in your own family could wind up stabbing you in the back. In essence, some people aren't always whom they seem. Pay close attention to the last part of that sentence: "Whom they seem." What we're saying, really, is that we perceive someone to be a certain way, but we can never be totally sure they're like that beneath the surface, or when they're not around us. And as I've reminded you in prior entries, perception is reality in our eyes even though that may not be the case in actuality. Yet, the same works when it's the other way around. Someone may strike us as rude, antisocial, indifferent, but when we really get to know them, we find ...

If there's something we can agree on, it's that haters lurk in our midst. Whether it's at work or in school, will always be someone who doesn't take kindly to something about us.  Maybe it's our gift for gab, our age, our impressive academic credentials, our BMW, or our ever-expanding circle of friends. And the funny thing is that some of these people secretly admire and look up to us, even though they would never admit it. But rather than worry about the jealous and envious -- whom many would regard as haters -- we should instead focus on the people who bring joy into our lives.  The ones who respect and cheer us on. The people who hold no ill will toward us.  The sad thing is that it isn't always easy to tell who likes us and who doesn't because, as pointed out in earlier entries, some people are, well, masters at faking it. And even if you know that, say, Joe your co-worker isn't your biggest fan, are you really going to ...

There are certain people in our lives whom we see on a daily basis, or thereabouts -- from our coworkers to the mailman to our partner. But just what effect does seeing these individuals every day have on us? Do they become more endearing to us over time, or do we eventually grow tired of seeing them? While the dynamics of the relationship comes into play (e.g., a toxic vs. caring boss, a fruitful marriage vs. a lousy one), the answer, according to social psychology, is both. In the 1960s, Robert Zajonc coined and demonstrated the mere exposure effect. As the name implies, mere exposure creates a positive bias toward a stimulus. The effect explains why you might find yourself humming a song you loathed the first time you heard it. The propinquity effect is the mere-exposure effect when applied to social contexts. In other words, we become friends with people in terms of functional or spatial proximity. In one study, residents of an apartment building were four times more li...

The American essayist, poet, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) once said, "You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment." Put simply, Thoreau meant that life is short, and we ought to make the most of every moment. He is also been credited for saying, "Our life is frittered away by detail...simplify, simplify." (In case you haven't read up on Thoreau, he lived in a cabin at Walden Pond for over two years. His purpose? To "live deliberately.") If Thoreau were alive today, he'd be aghast at how so many people in the country -- and the world as a whole -- have fallen pray to consumerism . Rather than finding ways to simplify their lives, people seem to be doing the exact opposite, saturating them with more stuff, more people, more noise. When Thoreau exhorts us to live in the present and launch ourselves on every wave, he isn't saying we should set out on shopping spree...

Certain people just aren't worth stressing about. I speak of those who are impossible to please. The ones who always have something to complain about. The type who seem disenchanted all the time, their primary goal being to have that misery rub off on us. No, thanks. We don't need such people in our lives. The more we can steer clear of them, the more peace of mind and less negativity we will have in our lives. Unfortunately, however, sometimes we have no choice but to stomach them as best as we can. Perhaps you work with a toxic boss or co-worker, but you don't feel now is the time to switch jobs. Or, your meddling in-laws are really testing your patience, but you don't want to say anything to land in hot water with them. That we will come across people we don't get along with is a certainty in life. But as I've said before, life is more about how you react to situations than the situations themselves. It's about how you adapt to circumstances...

We all have at least a couple of people in our lives who only show interest in us when they need something. Sadly, these individuals might be people we were very close to earlier in our lives. Maybe it's someone you worked with at your last company, a friend you've known since early childhood, or even a sibling you used to do everything with. Unfortunately, many of us find ourselves in a situation where we've made repeated attempts to get a hold of or hang out with the person in question, but they're always busy. Our calls go straight to voicemail and may not be returned for weeks, if we're lucky. Our invitations to meet up are met with hesitation, as if we were pulling their teeth. And it isn't as if we're reaching out because we necessarily need something. Maybe we just want to catch up over drinks or check out the new car they bought several months ago, but haven't yet invited us to see. When you feel as though you're pushing the other...

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Similarly, happiness means different things to different people. Joe's ideas of happiness may be earning 200K a year because it provides him the means to afford his big mansion and fancy cars -- even if it comes at the expense of having to work long 60 hour weeks. Ana's version of happiness may be far more modest. Give her a small apartment filled with books and pets and she's in bliss. Sam, for his part, might find happiness in moving to a different city every other year, while Betty might take delight in being a stay-at-home mom. Different strokes for different folks. Judging others for their likes and lifestyles is no less inappropriate than passing judgment on, say, their physical appearance. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, yes, but that doesn't grant them the latitude to criticize others' choices just because they don't align with theirs. I may aspire to become a manager, but you mi...

When people treat you as if they don't care -- no matter how emphatically they might say they do -- always go by their actions. It might sound pretty cliche by now, but actions really do speak louder than words. Actions, not  words, reveal a person's true intentions. If one's actions don't align with their words, it's pretty obvious they're being dishonest. If anything, our actions should back up whatever comes out of our mouths. So when people say they'll call or visit you, but you're left waiting weeks -- if not months -- for them to reach out to you, it's safe to say they never intended to establish contact in the first place. Some people think they're doing us a favor by telling us things we'd like to hear, even if they might not be entirely honest. Reality check: untruths, half-truths and white lies are all variants of dishonesty, even if such individuals say they're doing it to spare our feelings. Most people would prefe...

Never depend on anyone or anything to feel fulfilled in life. That includes: Your partner Your kids Your friends Your job/employer Your hobbies The operative word here is "depend." We depend on food, water, and oxygen for survival.  When it comes the examples listed above, they can certainly enhance our lives, but life satisfaction shouldn't depend on any one of them.  As we all know, things and people can change at the drop of a hat: Your partner could cheat on or fall out of love with you Your kids may distance themselves from you (or even grow to dislike you) as they get older Shifting priorities may water down your relationships You can be laid off at any given moment, or you may come to hate your job over time You can throw your back, rendering you unable to play football or other games you may enjoy  The car, watch, or mug you love so much could break unexpectedly I'm not saying these things will most definitely happen, but t...

Want a happier life? Many people assume that material possessions are essential to securing happiness, but this couldn't be farther from the truth.  In fact, here are two rules of thumb for achieving a more fulfilling life: 1. Use things, not people. 2. Love people, not things. It goes without saying that using people -- especially by trifling with their feelings -- is unacceptable. Save for cheating, stealing, or inflicting physical harm, taking advantage of others is the surest way to run your relationship with them into the ground. Now, just because you use things doesn't mean you have to place your happiness in them.  Material stuff -- from fancy cars to high-end watches-- serve to make us look stylish and our lives easier in many ways.  But such things wear and tear. No sooner do you get excited about owning the object than you're already planning what you'll buy next. Indeed, the novelty of owing stuff is only ephemeral.  A n...

You're not perfect. But neither am I. No one is. Give yourself credit from time to time for all you've accomplished. You've come a long way. You've overcome a slew of obstacles that life has thrown at you. Your life may not be perfect, but keep in mind that there is no such thing as the perfect life. If you can say that you look forward to the next day, and that each day consists of a handful of smiles and laughs coupled with special moments in the presence of people you love, you're doing far better than many out there. Cultivate self-compassion. Don't beat yourself up over past mistakes. Learn from them and move on. Don't blame yourself for relationships gone awry. While you may be at fault in some respects, a relationship requires that both people commit time and energy. It may be that they weren't pulling their weight like you assume they were. There's nothing wrong with continually trying to improve ourselves by setting new goals. ...

A telltale sign you're around the wrong people is if and when you find yourself bending over backwards to impress them. I'm not talking about those occasions that may warrant making a good first impression, like a job interview or first date. I'm specifically referencing everyday situations, like Happy Hour with coworkers or weekend outings with friends. Sure, we all want others to think favorably of us, but once it gets to the point where we're changing our habits and yielding to them on everything just to win their approval, something is off kilter. We all have a voice and should be allowed to use it no matter the relationship. That means the other person should be amenable to going along with whatever we may propose at times. Those who want to dictate the agenda every time are selfish and narrow-minded. Even worse are the ones who are relentless in their quest to push you into thinking or acting as they do. If you're an adult, guess what? Those high...